cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I, like many others, get by with a little help from my therapist. Each week, I find a quiet space to meet with her online, and I close the door. Sometimes it’s my car door as it sits in the driveway, sometimes it’s the door to my daughter’s bedroom while she’s at daycare. A quiet…
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All eyes peered in my direction as the room transitioned to silence. Sitting in the middle of the room, according to my assigned seat, placed me among a majority of my friends. Scurrying to English class, I slid into my seat and into the conversations surrounding me. The bell rang, signaling the start of class,…
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Dear Ministry Sister, I’ve had you on my mind all afternoon. I’ve been thinking about how things are for you and what I would want to hear if I was you. First, I want to say thank you. Thank you for saying yes to the call that led you where you are today. I want…
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His plan might have worked if I hadn’t been a girl. My brother was three when I was born and lived in a make-believe world created from bedtime stories and pages of well-worn children’s books. He loved hearing the same stories repeatedly, and his favorite tale included pirate ships and crocodiles. His relationship with fantasy…
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I sat with this month’s prompt, Lift Your Voice, for a week, finally commenting to my husband that I wasn’t sure what to write about. “That’s easy,” he said. “You have lots of stories about finding your voice—and how that’s been good for you and bad for me.” We both laughed, but the truth of…
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I was a senior in high school, waiting to begin what could potentially be my final balance beam routine in my final competition of my 10-year gymnastics career. If I scored high enough on the beam—my strongest event—I would advance to the state competition. If not, my decade-long involvement in the sport would come to…
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I was 17 years old and headed into my senior year of high school when my youngest sister was born. I remember feeling excited for Elly to come. But I also spent a lot of Elly’s first year of life worried. I worried that she and my sister Libby (who at that time was only…
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I sit on the airplane, wedged between Tim, my husband, and Reed, my younger son. Seth, my older son, sits just across the narrow aisle. The flight attendant moves down the aisle closing the overhead baggage compartments, signaling that boarding is over and our departure is at hand. I pull my AirPods out of my…
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Tread water, get pulled under, push to surface, gasp for air, tread water, get pulled under, push to surface, gasp for air. Slowly drowning has become my way of life. There is a rhythm to it, one that is familiar. A pattern that should probably feel scary or dangerous instead feels like home. So even…
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I finger the three separate baggies in my hand. They contain the remains of my father (age 95; died February 16, 2019), my mother (age 96; died July 22, 2020), and my youngest brother, John (age 64; died February 19, 2022). My two older sisters and I gather on the Oregon coast to celebrate the…
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